By J. Rentilly

IN 2014, NEIL Patrick Harris wrapped the
final season of his Emmy-nominated run as
splendiferous satyr Barney Stinson on the
CBS hit How I Met Your Mother. He donned
a handlebar mustache so paradisiacal it
commanded its own song in Seth
MacFarlane’s cowboy comedy A Million
Ways to Die in the West. He banshee-wailed
and shredded fishnet stockings in his Tony
Award–winning turn as an irascible but
endearing German transgender glam-rock
star in Broadway’s Hedwig and the Angry
Inch. Harris mingled doomed romantic
longing with gallows humor in the filmed
version of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel
Gone Girl. And he pulled a few rabbits out of
hats at the storied Magic Castle in Los
Angeles, where he serves as the president of
the board of directors. Oh, yeah, he also
wrote a book: Neil Patrick Harris: Choose
Your Own Autobiography.

A different approach

This being Neil Patrick Harris, even thatapproach was unconventional. Using thesecond-person, interactive style of EdwardPackard’s wildly popular young adult ChooseYour Own Adventure book series, whichprompted readers to choose the narratives’Delighted readers will enjoy true (presum-ably) tales from this Renaissance man’s vibrantlife, such as his acting debut as Toto in a 1983school production of The Wizard of Oz; work-ing with Stephen Sondheim, the Broadwaymusical maestro Harris refers to as “the mod-ern-day Shakespeare”; enjoying a week-long,cross-country 40th-birthday scavenger huntarranged by his longtime partner, DavidBurtka; and noshing caviar on Elton John’syacht in the Mediterranean. The stories arealternately ribald, ardent and mind-bending.

All over the board

For several years, following Harris’ self-lampooning in 2004’s Harold & Kumar Goto White Castle and his Emmy-nominatedbreakout on How I Met Your Mother, he wasapproached by publishers to write a conven-tional memoir full of wisdom and life les-sons—a notion that, he admits, made him“throw up in my mouth a little bit.”Inspiration struck suddenly a year agowhen Harris remembered fondly the ChooseYour Own Adventure titles of his youth inAlbuquerque, New Mexico, and quickly dis-covered that no one had yet co-opted thestory-telling device.

“Writing the book like this allowed me
to be poignant and then ridiculous, to
encourage the reader to go make a cocktail
or teach them how to do an amazing card
trick, and then to get suddenly sincere,” says
the 41-year-old Harris, who has two young
children with Burtka. “It’s kind of how my
mind works, actually.”

Past to present

As a child, obsessed with prestidigitation and tall tales, Harris thrilled at the
chance to “be” an astronaut or a ninja or a
spy in the Adventure books, directing his
own destiny by choosing which chapter to
read next. “Well, in my book, you get to be
me!” Harris proclaims, with an ironic braggadocio. “How amazingly lucky you are!”

That luck includes enjoying songs; one-liners; magic tricks; guest shots from Whoopi
Goldberg, Kelly Ripa and Penn Jillette; and
more than a few “confessions,” such as Harris
playing the Annie soundtrack album so often
as a preteen that the record no longer played;
having to play the xylophone and the bassoon in his middle school band; making
sandwiches in a shoddy deli in the years-long
gap between his feature film debut, Clara’s
Heart, and his big Hollywood break as the
star of ABC’s beloved Doogie Howser, M.D.;
and being “outed” by blogger Perez Hilton in
2006. (One of those is untrue, by the way,
though it is included in the book.)